Chapter 3

Stuff Like this Doesn’t Happen to Us

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Middle-school Jamie loved God as much as she could. She did the right things and made some big commitments to herself, to God, and to her parents. But looking back at middle-school Jamie today, I’m quite certain those commitments she made were motivated less by being true to her faith and more by how they enabled her to fit in and be noticed by others. Being popular with the cool kids, keeping up appearances, and getting praise from the right people were what really drove her heart. So if committing to keep herself pure made her stand out and get attention from her peers and the adults in her life, then middle-school Jamie was eager to do it.

But in high school, my stand for purity wasn’t getting me much attention anymore. Not many boys are lining up to date girls who’ve committed not to kiss anybody until they’re standing at the altar with one. Holding to this stance is a bit drastic to a sixteen-year-old boy, unless you’re sweet Stephen from Michigan. And Stephen’s motor home caravan had long left Texas by this time. I was now back in the real world, trying to figure out how to do two things at once: stay pure for God while also getting the attention I craved.

And I was discovering these two things might not fit into the same heart.

Because, again, making the commitment not to kiss anyone was easy when I was convinced Stephen and I would one day smooch for the first time after we said, “I do.” But the only reason this promise actually meant anything to me was because making it got me attention and praise from a guy. I think a clear sign that you’re needing attention from boys is if you’d commit to never kissing one, just so a particular boy would like you.

And if I was willing to go that far, what else would I commit to doing for the attention and affection I might gain from my commitments?

It wasn’t long until I found out.

Thinking back to this time in my life brings me so much sorrow—sorrow for the girl I became, sorrow for the children I’m raising. How I wish I’d known my worth to the Father during those years of my life, and how desperately I want my kids to know it themselves—how their Father in heaven adores them and has created them for grand purposes. My heart still aches for highschool Jamie, and for my own children, too, as they grow up and navigate these murky waters of wanting to be known and loved.

At the time, though, I was into making commitments . . . without truly knowing yet why I was making them.

My first big commitment after Stephen came as a freshman in high school when I signed my first True Love Waits card. If you didn’t grow up around church in the 1990s, you might never have heard of True Love Waits. But it was a huge international initiative promoting sexual abstinence for teenagers and college students. All the church kids were doing it. Signing the cards, that is.

These calls for commitment were often made at a community-wide rally, if not on a Wednesday night at your local church’s youth group time. (Side note again: if you didn’t grow up a church kid, I’ll do my best to explain our lingo.) “Youth group” is just what you’d think it is—a bunch of teenagers getting together in a structured environment at church. We met on Wednesday nights normally, where we sang for a while until our youth pastor (the staff member responsible for all the youth activities) got up and gave a little sermon. Then we mostly just hung out, which often meant girls on one side of the room and boys on the other, all hoping one day we’d be brave enough to mingle.

But back to True Love Waits and how it was presented at youth group night. Someone usually spoke to the students about the importance of saving yourself for marriage, and then they offered a time for teenagers to respond to this message—the chance to pledge yourself to a life of purity before you were married. (True love waits, see?) And to make your commitment official, they handed out pledge cards that said you were promising before God, as well as your family and friends, your future mate, even your future children, that you would keep yourself sexually abstinent until marriage. You signed the card, and you were good. Committed to the cause. Pledge made.

I believe there was even a True Love Waits day in Washington, DC, one year, where people came and placed their cards in the lawn and made a big hoopla about it. There were other big events, too, like where they stacked the cards to the top of a domed stadium. Several famous people were taking this stand publicly. It wasn’t something that was only happening in my city. It was worldwide.

So I remember signing my pledge card that night. I even kept my copy in my Bible so that every time I opened it, usually on Sunday mornings and Wednesday nights, I could see this reminder—my pledge to keep myself pure until my wedding day.

The only problem with this pledge, for me, was that signing a card didn’t make me feel any more loved and accepted than I’d felt before I signed it. Nothing changed in my heart. I’m not coming down on the True Love Waits plan, or any other similar program. Obviously, there’s value in challenging believers to be true to God’s teaching in Scripture. But I put my name on a piece of paper pledging to stay pure, though all the while my constant need for love and acceptance, my need for being known, was raging inside of my heart. All these things were fighting within me. And only one would win—either my pledge to be pure or my heart’s longing for love.

Another commitment I made during my early teenage years was with my dad. He took me out one night to a super-nice dinner at the local Olive Garden, and I wore a dress my mom had made for me. Yes, there was a season that my mom made all of my dresses. I giggle about it now, but I actually loved it at the time! I got to pick out my own patterns and fabric—I was basically outsourcing my fashion needs to my mom! It was probably the same one she’d sewn for me to wear to my eighth-grade dance. Except I wasn’t allowed to go to the eighth-grade dance—my parents weren’t ready for their eighth-grade daughter to do the whole school dance thing! My friend Lindsey, who also wasn’t allowed to go to the dance, and I got dates with our dads instead. A double date to a nice restaurant instead of the eighth-grade dance—practically every eighth-grade girl’s dream, right?!?!?

But this wasn’t that night. It was another night. And on this special date, when it was just him and me, he presented me with a necklace that had a key on it. I have no idea where my dad got this idea because he’s not much the “idea kind of guy.” Nonetheless, I was now the proud owner of a locket that I wore around my neck with a key on it. This key was to symbolize the key to my heart, and it was meant to stay with me until I was married, when I was supposed to present it to my husband on our wedding night. (Side note: Was I supposed to give him this key right before we had sex for the first time? I’m just gonna say that would be awkward. Or was I supposed to give it to him afterward? As some sort of prize? Even more awkward.)

Yet I was legitimately proud of this necklace and this moment. I truly felt loved by my dad, and I wanted desperately to please him. If only his love had been enough for my heart . . .

Unfortunately, however, I remember the day I broke all of these commitments.

At the time, it seemed as though breaking promises was the only cost of what I was doing—breaking my promise to my youth pastor, breaking my promise to my parents. Not until later did I understand the full weight of why these promises were so important. But in the moment, my commitment to keep myself pure until my wedding night didn’t hold the same claim on my heart as everyone around me had hoped it would. That pledge card never stood a chance for me. It didn’t make me feel loved, but this tangible boy in front of me did. The locket around my neck didn’t make me feel treasured the way I desperately wanted to feel, but this boy did. He convinced me that I was a treasure to him.

He told me I was beautiful, that he loved me.

He said since we loved each other, this was something we could do together. A first for both of us.

It meant something.

It was special.

What we had was special.

We were in love.

In love. In love.

Weren’t we?

No. As quickly as we fell “in love,” he fell out of love. Just a summer romance for him, but the beginning of a long road for me—giving myself up in hopes of feeling loved in return. A road I would walk for years to come. A road that continued to define me even after I stopped walking it. A road that always left me feeling defeated and empty—unloved, unaccepted—the exact opposite of what I was looking for.

What started that summer before my junior year in high school became my norm for the next five years. And during those five years, I signed two more True Love Waits cards, filing them away in my Bible with the first one—each one a vivid reminder of what my youth pastor and parents wanted for me, although clearly I didn’t understand what the big deal was. To me, at that time in my life, what I felt deep inside my heart from these other guys was real—as real as anything had ever been. I can roll my eyes now at high-school romance, at how incomplete that kind of love is, how fake and shallow it is. But as a sixteen-year-old girl, I was convinced I’d found my true love.

I was sure that’s what my heart truly needed.

So, I continued the lifestyle of giving myself away to whoever would love me for that moment, all in hopes of feeling loved, desired, complete, and known—though always with the same result after every breakup of feeling unloved again, undesired again, incomplete again, unknown again.

All I wanted now was to feel those things again.

I love having people around my dinner table sharing a fabulous meal and enjoying each other’s company. Something about a table full of delicious food brings everyone’s guard down a bit, and often you’ll get some raw and real experiences if you just ask the right questions.

I ask questions for a living on my podcast, The Happy Hour, but my interest in asking probing questions actually started on a cruise with some friends in 2010. I decided we needed to get the conversation moving around our table, so I facilitated some question-and-answer times. (Just call me cruise ship entertainer Jamie!)

I’m not sure I even remember where this question came from, but I’ve now asked it more times than I can count to guests around my dinner table at home. It’s a simple question. Nothing too hard. No deep thinking needed. And the answer is only one word. Here’s the question:

“Would you rather be rich or famous?”

That’s it. See, I told you it was simple. But what I love about this question is that deep down, you aren’t asking whether someone would rather be Warren Buffet, Oprah Winfrey, or Jennifer Aniston. You’re actually just asking, “What drives you?” Is it riches? Recognition? Money? Is it fame? Neither one is better or worse than the other; they’re just different. They both have their pitfalls, only different ones. “Would you rather be rich or famous?” That’s the question that sparked our conversation on the cruise that night.

My friend Amy said rich.

Her husband, John, also said rich.

My brother, Jordan, and his wife, Kristen, both said rich.

Traci said rich, but her husband, Ryan, said famous.

What would you answer? Rich or famous?

Aaron’s answer was famous, and so was mine. Still is today. Every time I’m asked, it’s always the same. Famous. Again, I have no desire to be a movie star or a singer. (Actually, that’s a lie. I would love to be a singer. Maybe like Carrie Underwood or Martina McBride or even Janet Jackson. If only I wasn’t tone-deaf. I let that dream die a long time ago.) But I do desire greatly to be known.

I’m not particularly proud of this desire, but I can’t deny it’s always been there in my heart. For years, I filled that need with the love I received from boys. And even now, despite having the love of the only boy I ever need, this hole is still there sometimes. I realize the church answer is that Jesus fills that hole; He’s the only one who matters—and this is indeed true. But we’re human. And this hole seems to show up in my life more often than I would like to admit.

Instagram has confirmed this need in me. At first, I didn’t really care how many likes or followers I was getting. No big deal. But then overnight it became a contest. A thousand followers . . . five thousand followers . . . ten thousand followers . . . goodness gracious, I now have twenty-five thousand followers. I’d better give them great pictures then. So they don’t leave me. So that my number of followers doesn’t start dropping.

So each picture now is crafted for them, not for me. No longer am I creating the family scrapbook I started out to make; now I’m creating the scrapbook my followers are demanding from me. Or at least that’s what my heart keeps telling me.

To do whatever it takes. To be known.

My podcast has exposed this need in me as well. I still can’t believe I just decided one day in May 2014 to start my own show. I also still can’t believe there have been millions of downloads of my show since it started. Does this make me famous? Is this what I wanted? Is my goal each week to create a good show, or do I just want you to know who I am? Some days I’m not sure. The line gets super blurry for me sometimes.

To be known is the constant struggle of the darkest places in my soul. It’s embarrassing to admit. But if I was being totally transparent with you, which I am, here’s what I’d say:

Hi, my name is Jamie, and I have a super ugly place in my heart. I want to be known so badly that it’s crippling sometimes. I thrive off of others’ approval. I’m happy if you’re happy with me, and I’m sad if you feel like I’ve let you down.

Oh, and I also feel good when I’m known for something, and feel bad when I’m forgotten about something.

Also, if you don’t like me, I’m crushed. (Please say you like me. Please say I’m good at this podcasting, speaking, writing, at being a mother, a wife, a friend . . .)

Is that not awful and exhausting? And yet so many of us live this way. The battle is constantly waging inside of us to be known, even though—without sounding too “churchy” here, I hope—in Jesus we are fully known and loved and accepted. Completely. He can truly satisfy the desires of our hearts, can satisfy each of our underlying needs. His love for us is beyond our understanding, and yet right in front of us all the time.

In fact, let me tell you how far beyond my understanding Jesus’ love has become for me. He knows I’m a sinner. He is fully aware of my struggle and desire for being known and loved. His desire is also freedom for me. He knows that my only source for being loved and known is in Him, and in His great kindness, He has given me a job that constantly puts me in front of people. In His kindness toward me, He brings this struggle to the surface, so that it can be dealt with and not left to destroy me. My job depends on more people knowing who I am. It’s almost like He wrote me a letter that says:

Jamie, I know your greatest desire, as well as your greatest weakness. So I’m going to throw you into the game with a job that depends on being known. From inside this job—where you’ll be constantly tempted to seek your satisfaction in the love and acceptance of other people—this is how I’ll best be able to show you that you constantly need Me, can constantly come back to Me, and can constantly remember that only in Me are you truly known.

Now, go make your podcast, go stand on stages to speak, and go write a book pouring out your soul. Have fun. And along the way, let’s get you free from needing others to make you feel good about yourself. All you need is Me.

I love you . . .

Can you think of a similar example of this in your own life? Where God is tossing you into the deep end of your greatest need, for the purpose of showing You in the process that He is all you’ll ever need?

Isn’t that just so strong and beautiful of Him?

For years, I laughed about my desire to be famous versus rich. And if you ask me today, my answer will still be the same. But I’m not so flippant about it anymore. I realize I’m fighting this sin on a daily basis of finding love and acceptance in other places and people besides God. Some days I have it beat; other days it takes me out all over again. But every day, no matter my level of fight, He is always there pursuing me, loving me, forgiving me, and reminding me of the efforts He went to in order to make me His child.

But I know deep down where my desire comes from. It’s from wanting to be truly known and loved for exactly who I am. And that’s something I’ve discovered can only come from God.

Throughout those years, I tried getting it met in other places, searching for something that no person could ever give me. Although sex is a precious gift from God, intended to help us become intimately known by another person—by one person, in marriage—I was using it with all the wrong people, at all the wrong times. That’s why it could never come close to satisfying my innermost desires. It always fell short of giving me what I needed. It always left me with that empty feeling you get, after you’ve placed your hope in something that fails you every single time.

Every. Single. Time.

Looking back on my teenage years, I remember how many times I vowed to never drink again and never have sex again. Usually these promises to God followed an evening that held much regret, or a morning where memories were hard to recall. Nonetheless, my promises only lasted until the next drink was offered, or until the next date night. In my head the life I was living was no different from the life everyone else I knew was living. What was the big deal anyway? I was a big girl who could handle my big-girl choices.

A few months ago, I was laid up sick on the couch and decided to watch some TV from those younger days. Friends was on, and so of course I had to stop and watch Rachel, Ross, Monica, and the whole gang. Several segments in the show made me pause as I was watching. The flippant way that sex was talked about and portrayed on the show is exactly how I was living in my late teenage years. In fact, not having sex with someone I was dating seemed odd to me. Weird. I had never yet been in a relationship where dating didn’t equate to sex. That was completely normal to me—despite how obviously messed-up this kind of thinking is. I knew my parents would be so angry and disappointed if they found out. I would die if my grandma knew this part of my life.

Yet this was who I was, and I felt little need to change. And even when I did—even in those moments when I felt guilty or wanted to be different—I didn’t know how to stop. How do you just wake up one day and decide you don’t want to have sex anymore, especially when nothing else makes you feel loved, accepted, and wanted like that? The only way I could stop living that way was if Jesus intervened. And I couldn’t see how anything He might give me could compare to what my heart felt from being with my boyfriend.

Deep in my soul I reassured myself that what I was doing was okay. After all, I was hardly the worst girl in school. Besides, I didn’t sleep with lots of guys, only the guy I was dating (as if that noble distinction was something I should be proud of). So, in my mind, I was still a good girl—a good churchgoing girl—who was doing normal things that everyone else was doing. I wasn’t doing drugs. I wasn’t sleeping around recklessly. I was making good grades, and—hey, I even had a job at a daycare loving on kids. Takes only a good girl to do that, doesn’t it?

And yet I would give myself away to whoever would love me.

That was high-school Jamie.

And, um . . . well . . .

College Jamie too.

I’d done the best I could to shield my unsavory social habits from my parents, but you can never do it completely. So while I assumed my parents were completely clueless to my reckless ways, they might have been on to me more than I thought. One indicator of this was that they sent me to a private Christian college in Dallas, in hopes that I would get myself together.

The thing about immersing someone into a certain environment, and putting all of your hope in that place to help them get their life together, is that it is never enough. No place, person, or event on its own can get someone’s life back on track. The only thing that can change someone’s life is a surrendered relationship with Jesus. Remember, I knew all about God and could say all the right things, but there was no intimacy between God and me. I kept looking all around me at college for intimacy, love, and affection, for that feeling of being known, even while God was continually pursuing me, offering me the joy of having all my needs met in Him.

I’ve heard it said that college is when you find out who you really are. In most cases, you’re heading to a new place where people don’t already know you. So, in a weird way, you can entirely re-create yourself, your image, your identity. But for me, I didn’t really try re-creating much of myself at all—except that I stopped even trying to be the “good Christian girl” on the outside. I became exactly the girl I wanted to be. The real Jamie showed up at college—not the girl who grew up in the church, who believed in God, who would choose Jesus over any counterfeit savior, and who for the most part lived an honorable life. I still didn’t do drugs, still didn’t smoke cigarettes. I clung to those things as sort of a measuring stick for how far I would go in life. No drugs. No cigarettes. But anything else, I was game for.

My first day on campus, I met two guys who were on the baseball team. I’m not saying baseball players can’t love Jesus; I’m saying at a private Christian school, most of the athletes could not care less about their faith. They only came to this particular school because it’s where they got a scholarship.

So, I’d found my people for the next two years. We partied hard. Most of the time we even showed up to class. My sweet roommate, who loved Jesus and was saving herself for marriage, looked down on me for not coming home some nights. She knew I was physically safe, just that I’d decided to sleep wherever the party had ended for the night.

Looking back on that time and the careless life I lived—how embarrassing—a miracle I didn’t end up dead or with a disease. There are so many things I’m ashamed of in my life. So many. Countless moments I wish I could change or do over. And my first two years of college are rather high on that “do over” list. I’m not saying I didn’t have fun. Big fun. But I was losing myself. I would literally wake up and not know what had happened the night before. I would go to class in someone’s T-shirt from whatever house I’d stayed at.

But my lifestyle of partying was about to catch up to me, and it was going to catch up hard.

Spring semester, sophomore year.

I found myself in a situation that wasn’t entirely new to me—something that had happened before and had always cleared itself up. I was late with my period. But I was sure it would work out fine again.

I’d shed many tears in high school over the what-ifs of being late. You’d think these close encounters would have affected my decision to continue having unprotected sex. I just always thought that something like this would surely never happen to me. That’s what happens to those girls. Not me.

But it wasn’t one of those times where it worked out fine.

I was one of those girls now.

She was me.

And as stupid as it sounds, this wasn’t even a long-term boyfriend. I’d only been dating this guy for a few months. Had never met his parents. Didn’t even know his middle name. Yet here I was—indeed pregnant—at twenty years old with a guy who was still a relative stranger to me.

I guess there’s no need to try describing how devastating this new development was. I couldn’t believe it. Stuff like this wasn’t supposed to happen to college Jamie. I may not have been living the life of the good Christian girl, but I thought I was a Christian girl just the same. A “grew up in the church” girl. A Bible Drill and youth group girl.

And yet when the initial shock died down, I was rather surprised how quickly my can-do, make-do spirit kicked into gear. I convinced myself I could make this work. I’d be fine. I moved into his apartment, hung my pictures on the wall, found my drawers in the dresser, put my toothbrush in the bathroom, and we began playing house. We were going to be a family. The best thing to do, I figured, was to marry this man. I mean, surely I loved him enough to become his wife. Right? I mean, I was pregnant with his child. Can you do that and not truly love somebody? And not be truly loved in return?

For a few weeks of naïve denial, I tried to forget what was going on. I pushed it out of mind. I mean, I looked the same. Felt the same. Everybody was still treating me the same. But pretty soon, I could no longer deny the fact that I needed to have the hardest conversation I’d ever had with anybody in my life.

I had to tell my parents.

Obviously, this chore would be difficult in any situation. But I knew when I revealed this news to my parents, I wouldn’t just be telling them about my pregnancy. My confession would also be wrapped up in all the failed commitments I’d made since I was their middle-school Jamie. The locket hadn’t worked; the True Love Waits cards hadn’t worked; the special dates with my dad hadn’t worked. Nothing had worked. None of those things had kept me pure. I had broken all my commitments a long time ago, and now I’d only be filling in my mom and dad on the disaster of a life I’d created for myself.

And I wasn’t sure how to do that. I had no idea what to expect. I had let them down big-time, and they were sure to freak out. The only bright side was that there was a baby involved in this conversation—guess what, y’all, you’re going to be grandparents! Maybe whatever anger they felt and expressed would be tempered by that.

Still, I couldn’t be sure. So I opted for a public place. I’m no dummy. I wasn’t about to drive to their house to tell them, where I’d be stuck, unable to escape whatever emotions might spill out.

Then further modifying my plan, I decided to tell only my dad first. He was the less likely of the two to lose his mind with me. I even figured out just how to do it. My brother was running at a track meet in Waco, so I made the drive down alone from Dallas to watch him run. I didn’t bring my baby daddy along, just me. I sat with my dad and some other parents during the meet, cheering my brother on as he ran, all the while knowing I was holding a bomb inside that would soon ignite when I told my dad of my impending marriage and motherhood.

I’d decided that right before it was time to part ways, I would tell him. The last-minute words wouldn’t leave him much time to process it all and overreact. (I told you I was no dummy.) Although I don’t recall exactly how I told him, I vaguely remember it going something like this:

ME: Sure been great to see you, Dad.

DAD: You too, Jamie, thanks for driving down. I know your brother appreciates it.

ME: Yeah, no big deal! I love watching him run.

DAD: Great. Well, we’ll see you in a few weeks.

ME: Sounds great! Oh—by the way, Dad, I’m pregnant.

DAD: What?

ME: Yeah. You’ve never met the guy, but . . . he’s great.

DAD: What?

ME: I think we’re going to get married this summer.

DAD: What?

For real, that happened. Which left my dad rather shocked and a bit taken aback by the conversation. (No kidding, right?) And though my plan had called for him to be the one who went home and told my mom, he made it quite clear that I would need to be the one to tell her myself. Which is what I was afraid he would say. I was a big girl now, making big-girl choices—like getting pregnant and all—so the least I could do was call my mom on the phone and let her know she was going to be a grandma!

Needless to say, the phone call didn’t go well. My mom was, uh . . . let’s go with furious . . . though not nearly as furious at me for being pregnant as she was furious that I was even entertaining the idea of marrying this guy. My mom well knew the old saying that two wrongs don’t make a right. I sure didn’t need to make another mistake, she said, of marrying a guy I hardly knew, just to make up for the mistake of having sex with him before I was married.

From the clear hindsight of time, I’m beyond thankful for her insightful anger on this issue, and I’d like to say I trusted her and followed her lead on it.

But I didn’t. My boyfriend and I continued playing house. I worked; he worked; we talked about a wedding day, baby names, all the things you do when preparing to become a mom and a wife all in the same year.

And then all of it shattered. The whole dream—unsound and accidental though it was—fell apart.

I was at the apartment one day when I noticed the blood. For a twenty-year-old who’d never been pregnant—in fact, had never known anyone up close who’d been pregnant—this was scary. I called my doctor, and the lady on the phone told me not to worry. It could be bad, but it could just as easily be normal. Only time would tell. We set in for the wait.

The thing about being twenty and unexpectedly pregnant is that, at first, it’s the worst thing in the world that could ever happen to you, and then it becomes the greatest. Of course, I didn’t plan my life this way, and of course I didn’t desire to be a teenage mom. But here I was. What could I do about it? I never entertained the idea of abortion, so my next option was to pick myself up and carry on. I would be a momma. And as soon as you make that choice, you’re in love with the baby in your belly, and all the other variables don’t seem to be that big of a deal anymore.

But now this blood was threatening this baby. And we were still waiting to see if it was okay blood or bad blood.

It looked bad. Even with resting and staying off my feet, I started bleeding more, and we decided to go to the ER to get this whole situation checked out. Hand in hand we walked in, both in love with this baby, and honestly not much in love with each other. How could we be? We hardly knew each other. Our baby had become the glue between us, and we were feeling as though the glue was slowly unsticking. A few weeks before, we’d planned on keeping this baby and getting married before he or she was born. Now we found ourselves in the ER in the middle of the night, and I was feeling as though everything was falling apart. Things didn’t seem as they were supposed to seem. As much as I had never planned to be a mom at twenty, this baby I loved was in jeopardy, and I was a mess.

As long as I live, I’ll never forget what transpired next. The doctor walked in, looked me straight in the eyes, and—no joke, he said it just like this: “Yep, the baby’s dead.” How could anybody say something as heartless and matter-of-fact as that? I know we were two barely past teenagers with zero clues about life, but we loved this baby, and his words hurt me to the core. It was the most awful interaction I’ve ever had with a doctor in my entire life.

Now the glue between my boyfriend and me was indeed gone. I walked into that hospital a momma, and I left a twenty-year-old lost girl—a girl who thought she’d found a man and a baby to fill all the holes in her life, who thought she was about to be known and loved in a grand way.

Now what would I/we do?

We continued to play house, but it didn’t feel right to me anymore. I didn’t love this man enough to spend forever with him without our child. The baby was why I’d chosen forever with him, and now that there was no baby, I decided there would be no forever between us either. Honestly, I think he knew this too. We weren’t in love, and it was evident. We were two kids who got ourselves in a situation, and we thought we could make it right with a ceremony and wedding bands. But now there was no need for all that hoopla. We were done.

The emotions of losing something you loved but never wanted in the first place are exhausting. At first I was devastated by the loss of my child. I was beyond sad and wanted everything back like it was before. The tears flowed endlessly, and I couldn’t seem to function again because of the sadness that had overcome me.

Then a few weeks later, I began to feel relieved. Relieved that I wasn’t becoming a mom before I’d planned for this responsibility. Relieved that I could finish school without the setback a baby would create for me. Then guilt rushed over me for feeling relieved. How could I feel relieved from losing a child? Sorrow. Relief. Guilt. A constant wave of emotions.

Finally, I asked my parents if I could move back home. I knew I couldn’t process these emotions in Dallas. I needed a safe place to land . . . because the pregnancy, as tough as it was, hadn’t been rock bottom for me. The miscarriage was what took me to rock bottom. The pregnancy was a hurdle we would jump, and life would continue on. The miscarriage left me feeling more alone than ever before. And for the first time in a really long time, I felt as though there just might be more to life than the way I’d been living. What if the church stuff I followed in middle school was right? What if I was worth more than this? What if God actually did have big plans for me? But even if those things were true, how could they still be true for me now?

I moved home in the summer of 1998, and had never been more alone in my entire life.